When he came to, the first thing Hichy saw was poor Helios, whom a woman was violently dragging along on the end of a lead. The donkey was braying with all his strength. Beside him lay Inata, unconscious, and a thick stream of blood was flowing from her split-open skull. The wolf was groaning in pain, his back smashed by a large stone. As for Melio, he was nowhere to be seen, which boded the worst.
HP = 2, AP = 15, XP = 12, GP = 0
The situation was so critical that the boy did not know where to begin. "The first thing to do when helping an injured person is to stop the bleeding," Golock had told them one day. "When there is more than one, you have to act by order of priority. The one shouting the loudest is the one who still has the most energy. He is not the one you should rush toward, but rather the one who says nothing, who is unconscious because he is bleeding out."
Armed with that advice, the boy leapt toward his sister. Pushing off with his right leg tore a cry of pain from him, his tibia being broken clean in two and a shard of bone protruding from the bloody flesh. He fused the two pieces together before even landing and cushioned the fall with the most swiftly healed leg in the history of the human species. A piece of flesh was still hanging loose, but he would have time to deal with that later.
The priority was to stop the haemorrhage. Thanks to his power, he instantly closed his sister's skull. She was not saved for all that. Her pulse remained very weak, and she had lost a great deal of blood. Though they were only half twins, Hichy and Inata had the same rhesus blood type. By analysing the molecules flowing through his sister's veins, the boy was able to verify their compatibility. There were indeed a few differences he could not explain, but the haemoglobin in the two of them seemed close enough.
Making an incision in his own arm as well as in Inata's required no tool at all, the urgency of the situation and the adrenaline having pushed the boy to his limits and made him discover abilities he had not suspected. Blood began to flow from one body to the other and rushed toward the young woman's heart until it resumed a normal rhythm.
The donkey's cries were so loud that they bounced off the rock face and ricocheted through the mountain. It was therefore not toward him that Hichy turned, but toward the wolf, whose groans were growing more and more heartrending. He lifted the rock beneath which the poor animal had been trapped and snapped his back back into place with a simple click of the fingers.
At last he went to Helios's aid before he ended up in the form of dried sausage. The rope around his neck disintegrated under the action of Hichy's magic. The donkey was also suffering from internal bleeding, which the boy's treatment relieved instantly. Above all, it was the ears of all who had heard him bray that found relief.
All that time, Hichy had neutralised and kept the female attacker motionless in a bubble of air. Even if she screamed, no one could hear her, since sound needs a medium through which to propagate and the boy had formed an almost perfect vacuum before her mouth.
Having dealt with the most urgent matters, he was finally able to treat the less visible injuries, a cracked rib here, a broken toe there, a split hoof that was extremely painful for the donkey.
HP = 10, AP = 15, XP = 14, GP = 0
"The animals are going to have to learn to repair themselves," Inata said in a weak voice.
Although all her organs were functioning perfectly, the young woman still lacked blood. For lack of better food, Hichy brought her mosses and grasses that she began slowly chewing. Even with all the powers in the world, the process remained long for absorbing those foods and turning them into quality blood.
"I don't understand what happened," the twin said.
"And yet it's very simple. Our naivety betrayed us. Brigands don't always carry signs saying 'Warning, we are wicked'. The most dangerous are those who look the most innocent."
"How do we know whom we can trust, then?"
"That, we shall have to learn little by little."
"In the meantime, where were you taking our donkey?" Hichy asked the woman still trapped.
Since she could not speak, the boy removed her invisible gag. She had just enough time to scream before he silenced her again. She was clearly not inclined to answer them.
"Lead us to your clan," Inata ordered her.
"No," the woman signalled with her head.
"I've got an idea!" the boy exclaimed.
The advantage of being able to manipulate matter is that it applies equally well to things and to living beings, to animals and to humans. By concentrating hard enough, Hichy was able to take control of the atoms making up their attacker's body and manipulate her like a puppet. Despite her resistance, he forced her to place one foot before the other. Little by little, she began walking under compulsion, at first in a very artificial way, but with a fluidity that improved at every step. Only her eyes, rolling in their sockets, expressed her fury at finding herself conducted like a marionette.
"This is like a puppet show!" Hichy said, delighted with his joke.
Inata had recovered enough strength, and Darok was leaping all around her, tongue lolling, yapping with joy. It remained to find Melio and neutralise their attackers. How many were there, and what means did they possess? That was difficult to assess. One thing was certain: they controlled magic well enough to render themselves invisible or create the illusion of being somewhere they were not.
"Let's go!" the boy said, tugging on the woman's strings to make her move.
"Wait! I've got an idea," his sister interrupted him.
Inata picked up strands of hemp from the ground and braided them again into a good strong lead. Helios was reluctant to let that horrible sign of submission be placed around his neck, but the young woman managed to convince him of the need. The idea was to maintain the illusion that the woman bandit still controlled the situation and that the donkey was still tied up. The donkey would therefore serve as bait for the second time that day. He was free to bray as much as he liked, his protests only making the scene more convincing.
The rest of the group had to remain hidden behind, which represented an additional difficulty, Hichy's powers weakening with distance. He found it hard to act upon the woman at more than ten metres away, especially when she struggled.
"What did you do?" the boy asked anxiously as the woman became as limp as a rag.
"Don't worry. I just unplugged her spinal cord," his sister replied.
"She isn't going to become tetraplegic, is she?"
"I don't think so. It's temporary. I'll put it all back together."
Thanks to Inata's intervention and the conjunction of their powers, the twins were able to direct the woman's steps from more than a hundred metres away. There was something exhilarating about it, like piloting a drone or a remote-controlled toy. And yet taking control of another human being had something deeply unhealthy about it, which profoundly troubled Hichy. The idea that a person could decide his movements in that way was unbearable to him. He promised himself he would end the experiment as soon as possible, it drawing from the deepest part of his resources and in any case being impossible to continue for much longer.
Bird cries were suddenly heard as they passed beneath a rocky pinnacle. Those signals were unknown to the twins, who decided to keep the woman walking straight ahead while making her nod. It worked, since two sentries signalled to her to continue toward a cave.
Cries were issuing from the entrails of the earth, and Hichy perceived spits and hisses that could come only from his little ginger cat. The decoy having worked, he immediately freed Helios, who bounded away in a leap more than twenty metres high. The donkey had no wish to remain there a moment longer.
The first sentry collapsed to the ground as though emptied of his soul, while the second rushed inside the cave to warn his accomplices. The children flung themselves after him and plunged into the cave. Inside, everything was confusion and thick smoke. Some fifty individuals were shouting and wheeling around a raging beast in an attempt to capture it. Some appeared in one place, then vanished and took shape again a little farther off. Melio no longer knew where to strike, clawing and biting, sometimes at empty air, but sometimes too managing to crunch a finger or slash a cheek.
The cave floor was covered with blood. Most of the attackers were men, though a few women were fighting too. They were armed with knives, axes, and anything that could cut or bludgeon. Several women were huddled together in a sort of recess at the very back of the cave, clutching children to themselves. Hichy recognised the little girl who had betrayed their trust.
There was something absurd about seeing so many brigands around so small an animal, without managing to capture it. The balance of force nevertheless remained totally unequal, and Melio's resources were running out. The ginger cat was limping and seemed to have his right hind leg broken at the knee. The intervention of the rest of the band was arriving just in time.
Hichy sent several thugs crashing against the rock wall. Inata preferred to unplug them without violence. That second method had the disadvantage of being temporary. On seeing the woman who had tried to steal their donkey, the twin realised that the effect faded as soon as she relaxed her attention. Besides, she could maintain only a few individuals unplugged at a time, five at most.
Physical violence remained the best method, the only worthwhile one in order to confront the attacks of which Melio was the target. His master took advantage of a moment's respite to repair his companion's leg and heal his wounds. The cat then sprang at one of the brigands' faces and gouged out both his eyes with his claws. The poor wretch screamed in pain. Inata broke both his arms and both his legs while restoring his sight to him, so that he would not remain irrevocably blind.
The fighting gradually ceased, in rhythm with the bodies collapsing to the ground. The twins had succeeded in neutralising that band of nauseating humans, foul-smelling and sweaty as well as morally corrupt. They thought they had won the game, but they had already forgotten that appearances are sometimes terribly deceptive.
HP = 20, AP = 53, XP = 47, GP = 0